Since the late 1990s, China has pinned its hopes on clean, renewable energy to try to balance growth and environmental concerns and ultimately reduce its reliance on coal. Alternative sources of energy such as solar panels also represented a low-cost solution for the approximately 30 million people who lived in villages without electricity in 2002. But in China's Northwest provinces, where population densities are less than 40 people per km2, establishing effective sales and service operations was particularly challenging. Poor products and services, in turn, hampered the reputation and market growth of photovoltaic (PV) systems.

Supported the sale of solar systems to approximately 400,000 rural households and institutions in the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and Sha'anxi, and in the Autonomous Regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Xizang and Ninxia. The supply of solar electricity to isolated semi-nomadic populations (mainly herdsmen) translated into improved access to communications, education and entertainment, improved indoor air quality, and reduced CO2 emissions.

• A market survey conducted during project preparation in four of China's northwestern provinces helped participating companies design appropriate and effective marketing strategies to overcome local barriers.
  
  
• Participating companies selling high-quality, project-approved PV systems were rewarded with direct grants.
  
  
• Market Development Support and Technology Improvement Facilities provided matching grant assistance to PV companies eager to improve their business and marketing practices and improve the technical quality of their products, such as by obtaining quality certification. By the end of 2007, 34 participating companies had received 190 Market Development Support grants valued at about $688,000 and 201 grants for technology improvement worth $2.12 million and had matched these grants with at least the same amount of financing of their own. One such company (Suntech or Wuxi Shangdu by its Chinese name) received a grant in 2002 to develop an intelligent controller for PV systems. Four years later it was listed on the New York Stock exchange and had become one of the world's top 10 PV cell manufacturers.
  
  
• The project supported the development of national technical product standards and product certification to increase consumer confidence. Training was also provided to approximately 50 PV manufacturing and maintenance companies to improve product quality and services. Initially, a national standard was adopted, but from 2004 the international standard for PV systems was adopted by China - a standard which all systems financed under the project must now meet it. Partly as a result of this, China has now become a major exporter of world-class PV systems to other developing countries.
  
  
• By helping to upgrade the quality of PV systems made in China, the project helped combine international technology advances with China's proven low-cost production capabilities. This, in turn, helped make China the number 1 producer of solar equipment and components around the world.
  

While this project focused on providing rural areas far from power grids with access to electricity and demonstrating the commercial viability of wind, a follow-up project, the China Renewable Energy Scale-Up Project (2005-2010), takes a broader look at China's renewable energy development strategy. It seeks to remove some of the technical, administrative, and capacity constraints that limit the competitiveness of alternative energy sources such as wind farms and biomass plants.